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Fragments of a People

Fragments of a People

In 1983 four members of the Ava-Canoeiro tribe - three women and a man, Iawi - were caught stealing food from a settler in the Serra de Mesa and taken into care by Brazil's Indian Protection Service. They were, it became clear, the survivors of a horrific massacre in their village in 1962. For twenty years the four hid in the mountains, taking refuge in a succession of remote caves. Only one of the women, Tuia, was of child-bearing age, and after a few years she gave birth to twins - a boy and a girl. But unless another group of Ava-Canoeiro, rumored to be out in the scrubland, can be contacted to provide potential mates for the two children, the tribe, descendants of runaway slaves from the once feared Carijo tribe, is doomed to extinction.

The film chronicles the frantic efforts by the Indian Foundation's Department for Unknown Peoples to find the missing group before their ancestral lands are drowned by a massive hydro-electric dam.

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